Deprecation Notice

Since AWS has added the ability to copy AMIs between regions directly to the API, this project is being deprecated. It will probably be archived and removed in the near future.

amicopy

amicopy is a Python script that copies EBS AMIs between regions. It uses a similar methodology to copy EBS volumes that Amigo (AWS's unsupported AMI copy tool) does, but is much simpler to use.

It uses Tsunami UDP to do a fast transfer.

Be aware that using amicopy will generate both transfer fees and costs associated with running instances in both the source and destination regions during the copy.

Note: amicopy is still in beta and may not copy AMIs succuessfully. Please report any bugs you find.

License

amicopy is released under the BSD license. See LICENSE.txt for more details.

Prerequisites

• Python 2.7 (2.6 hasn't been tested, but should work)
• A recent version of boto (2.5.2 or 2.6.0 should work)
• An AWS account

Download

Download a prebuilt copy amicopy from https://github.com/infor-cloud/amicopy/downloads

Running amicopy

Running amicopy differs slightly depending on the OS you are using. The basic syntax is:

UNIX: ./amicopy SOURCEAMI SOURCEREGION DESTINATIONREGION Windows: c:\Python\Python.exe amicopy SOURCEAMI SOURCEREGION DESTINATIONREGION

Note: Examples will show be shown on a UNIX version, but the actual command line syntax applies to both.

Example:

./amicopy -v ami-123456 us-east-1 us-west-1

Windows AMIs

Because of how Amazon charges for Windows AMIs, the process for copying the AMI requires a couple extra steps. amicopy handles these steps for you, but it requires an extra parameter, the destination AMI.

To determine the destination AMI, find an AMI in the destination region that matches the AMI you're trying to copy. For example, if you're trying to copy an AMI runing Windows 2008 R2 Base, you'll look for the AMI ID of the Amazon-provided Windows 2008 R2 Base AMI.

The destination AMI architecture (32 or 64 bit) must match the source AMI architecture.

Use the --dst-ami command line option to specify the destination AMI.

Example:

./amicopy ami-123456 us-east-1 us-west-1 --dst-ami ami-635d7926 

Other Command Line Options

• -v, --verbose Turns on verbose output. This option is highly recommended.
• --dst-ami Specifies the Windows AMI to use in the destination region to generate the new AMI.
• --src-key AWS access key id for source account
• --src-secret AWS secret key for source account
• --dst-key AWS access key id for destination account
• --dst-secret AWS secret key for destination account
• --key-size Length of the key to use to encrypt the EBS volumes during the transfer. Default: 2048.
• --inst-type Type of instance to use. Note: Using an instance type smaller thatn m1.large (the default) will slow down the transfer, since smaller instance types have lower network throttle values.
• --name Tag and/or name to use for temporary AWS objects. Default: amicopy + timestamp
• --kernel-id AKI to use for destination AMI
• --src-keypair Keypair to use for source instance. Typically only need to debug.
• --dst-keypair Keypair to use for destination instance. Typically only need to debug.
• -d, --debug turns on debugging output. This generates a lot of output. Be sure to redirect it to a file.

Troubleshooting

The most likely problem is that the copy will appear to hang. This is because amicopy is dependent on the source and destination instances to complete the EBS volume copy successfully before continuing. If the process gets stuck, CTRL-C will cancel the copy and the script will clean up any temporary objects.

Here are some further tips for troubleshooting:

• Always run in verbose (--verbose or -v) mode in order to be able to see what the script is doing.
• If amicopy gets stuck at this message, Waiting for destination instance to shutdown, you will need to log into the instances and check the user data script logs.
• Use --src-keypair and --dst-keypair to specify SSH keypairs to allow you to log into the source and destination images.
• Check the amicopy logs. They are located at /media/ephemeral0/amicopy.log on each server.
• If amicopy fails with an unexpected error, use --debug to turn on extra boto and AWS API information. Be sure to redirect the output to a file, since this option will generate a lot of information.

Building amicopy

Building amicopy is not terribly hard, but you will need access to AWS to build Tsunami UDP. Basically the build procedure builds the Tsunami binaries on AWS and then includes them

1. Make sure that boto can connect correctly without providing credentials directly. See http://docs.pythonboto.org/en/latest/boto_config_tut.html or use the AWS_CREDENTIAL_FILE variable to point to your credential file. You can test connectivity with the following code. If you don't get an exception, your connection should be working.

   from boto.ec2.connection import EC2Connection
   e = EC2Connection()

2. Grab the code from github

3. Run make

   make

Future Improvements

• Rewrite the snapshot tracking code

  Right now it's way too complicated and prone to errors. It also makes things like adding tagging on destination snapshots quite difficult.

• Add tagging for destination snapshots

• Check to make sure that the AMI is actually an EBS AMI and not an instance based AMI